The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories

This is one of my favorite short story anthologies (and I own quite a few!). It has some interesting pieces and a wide variety of both subject matter/content and authorship. All-in-all a great anthology!

I was very pleased with this book. It was the exact book I needed for class and it was brand new. The price was great too!

Daniel Halpern has compiled and edited a great anthology of short stories from countries like Ghana, Lebanon, United States, England; Cuba, Canada; Australia, Martinique, India, Haiti, Italy, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Russia, Hungary, Somalia, Uruguay, France, Tanzania, Denmark, Poland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Ireland, Wales, Morocco, Turkey, Japan, Nigeria, Israel, Germany, Kenya, Argentina, South AFrica, and China. The authors include known and some unknown like Ama Ata Aidoo from Ghana; Hanan Al-Shaykh from Lebanon; Julia Alvarez, Toni Cade Bambara, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, T. Coraghessen Boyle, Robert Olen Butler, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Lydia Davis, Deborah Eisenberg, Nathan Englander, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah, Edward P. Jones, Bobbie Ann Mason, Steven Millhauser, Lorrie Moore, Mary Morris, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Edmund White, John Edgar Wideman, Joy Williams, Jeanne Wilmot, and Tobias Wolff from the United States; Martin Amis, Nicola Barker, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Jim Crace, Patricia Duncker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, and Rose Tremain, and Jeanette Winterson from England; Reinaldo Arenas from Cuba; Margaret Atwood from Canada; Peter Carey from Australia; Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique; Vikram Chandra, Bharati Mukherjee from India; Edwidge Danticat from Haiti; Daniele del Giudice, Antonio Tabucchi from Italy; Junot Diaz from the Dominican Republic; Duon Thu Huong from Vietnam; Victor Erofeyev, Victor Pelevin, Tatyana Tolstaya, from Russia; Peter Esterhazy from Hungary; Nuruddin Farah from Somalia; Eduardo Galeano from Uruguay; Herve Guibert from France; Abdulrazak Gurnah from Tanzania; Peter Hoeg from Denmark; Pawel Huelle from Poland; Roy Jacobsen from Norway; James Kelman from Scotland; Torgny Lindgren from Sweden; Colum McCann from Ireland; Ian McEwan from Wales; Mohammed Mrabet from Morocco; Murathan Mungan from Turkey; Haruki Murakami, Banana Yorshimoto from Japan; Ben Okri, Ken Sao-Wiwa from Nigeria; Amos Oz from Israel; Ingo Schulze from Germany; Ngai wa Thiong'o from Kenya; Luisa Valenzuela from Argentina; Zoe Wicomby from South Africa; Can Zue from China; The book concludes with biographical notes from each author.

Gone are the days when a writer could earn a living publishing short stories in magazines because gone, too, are the days when most people read them. That's a shame, as this anthology demonstrates, because short fiction offers pleasures to the reader, and challenges to the writer, which are unavailable in longer forms. Like shots of liqueur, they can pack a mighty punch. "Short" doesn't mean a story can't be complex or moving, or can't address expansive themes. Indeed, that the better short stories achieve precisely those things is one measure of their greatness. Daniel Halpern's selections here prove it. His anthology not only gives hours of reading pleasure, but also provides an indispensable resource for aspiring writers: these stories display such an amazing range of themes, styles and narrative structures, they make it a veritable showcase of approaches to storytelling. For the student of literature, they offer condensed examples of how writers do their work. Of course, not everything can appeal in a volume of this size, but for me there were some highpoints: "Dharma", a moving ghost story by Vikram Chandra; the cleverly historical "The Green Man" by Jeanette Winterson; the almost casually powerful "Talking Dog" by Francine Prose; "Midnight and I'm Not Famous Yet", a Vietnam memoir by Barry Hannah; "Everything in This Country Must", a child's perspective on Northern Ireland, by Colum McCann; "The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor" by Deborah Eisenberg and "The Lifeguard" by Mary Morris, both of which deal with death and adolescence; the immensely moving "Evermore" by Julian Barnes; the domestic suspense of "A Family Dinner" by Kazuo Ishiguro; and the heartbreaking lament of "Intimacy" by Hanif Kureishi - which, I assume, is the seed which grew into his novel of the same name. Ironically, Kureishi's story shows precisely what can be achieved in the short form: for my money, it's better than his novel.

i checked this out of the libary and both my husband and i have thoroughly ravaged its pages. i carried it about a month; he carried it for another. we incurred almost more overdue fines than the book (hardcover) cost. we liked it so much we are purchasing it to bring back home to new york. the selection is insightful and appreciated, and if any thread unites the stories it is that they succeed as the best writing ought -- in acting as instant portals/transporters to another time, place, world, of life or ideas, psychology or thought. i read a lot of (mostly american) short stories and literary magazines, but this anthology truly had at least 3 of the best stories i've ever read. also, i appreciated that these stories were not just personal sketches of ethic/outsider subjectivity or sex born of the blandness of suburbia or alienation of the city, etc.: the author steps aside, the story tells itself. the stories are artful, masterly, probably the epitome of each writer's writing career (they read like those gems, with a few exceptions). you feel this in the reading. word by word, the stories unfold, unravel, draw you magnetically down the line of prose and make you lean back at the end of a story and marvel that you're still sitting where you were how many minutes ago? and it was only 3 pages? let me read that again. truly successful writing; truly well-selected anthology. buy it.